"For now, wary US treads water with transformed COVID-19"
"As many as 8 out of 10 people in the U.S. have been infected at least
once, according to one influential model.
The death rate for COVID-19 has been a moving target, but recently has
fallen to within the range of an average flu season, according to data
analyzed by Arizona State University health industry researcher Mara
Aspinall.
At first, some people said coronavirus was no more deadly than the flu,
“and for a long period of time, that wasn’t true,” Aspinall said. Back then, people had no immunity. Treatments were experimental. Vaccines
didn’t exist.
Now, Aspinall said, the built-up immunity has driven down the death rate
to solidly in the range of a typical flu season. Over the past decade,
the death rate for flu was about 5% to 13% of those hospitalized.
Big differences separate flu from COVID-19: The behavior of the
coronavirus continues to surprise health experts and it’s still unclear whether it will settle into a flu-like seasonal pattern.
Last summer — when vaccinations first became widely available in the
U.S. — was followed by the delta surge and then the arrival of omicron,
which killed 2,600 Americans a day at its peak last February."
https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-infectious-diseases-fb25f987bab09a11be31a32e832dd9de
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